Multi-screen usage during television consumption has become more popular. These solutions display second-screen content on second-screen devices while a user watches first-screen content (e.g., a television show) on a first-screen device (e.g., television). The second-screen provide complementary content that may depend on synchronization mechanisms to synchronize the second-screen content on the second-screen device with activity (e.g., intra-program content) that is occurring on the first-screen device. For example, when a user is watching a television show on the first-screen device, an advertisement on the second-screen device that is related to specific content of the television show is displayed at an appropriate time.
Before sending the advertisement to the second-screen device, a content source must detect the intra-program content has or will occur. In a cable network system, the cable delivery company is typically different from the content source. Thus, the content sources typically do not have access to the cable delivery company's network. In this case, the content source may use an over the top (OTT) solution to synchronize the intra-program content with the second-screen content. For example, the content source uses the second-screen device to detect the content being output on the first-screen device.
One solution to detect what content is being output by the first-screen device may be to use audio fingerprinting solutions. In this case, the second-screen device starts the process by performing the audio fingerprinting. For example, the second-screen device may run an application that is always on and using the microphone to detect audio in the location of the second-screen device. Then, the second-screen device may perform audio fingerprinting to detect the content in the location. The detected fingerprints then need to be compared with an index of fingerprints to identify the content or a time within the content. This may involve using an over the top network to connect to a server to perform the comparison, or the client may perform the comparison. This solution may use a lot of the processing power and battery life of the second-screen device, which may not be desirable. Further, privacy concerns may exist if the microphone of the second-screen device is always accessed.